Blog Archives
Artamonoff Collection Shows Istanbul and Western Turkey In Photographs, 1935-1945
This collection is a bit too small to be one I’d normally cover, but when Harvard announced it last week I found the pictures to be compelling, and wanted to make sure you knew about it. The new collection is called the Nicholas V. Artamonoff Collection, and it features 543 photos taken by Artamonoff between 1935 and 1945, at sites (archaelogical sites, and ruins) in Istanbul and western Turkey. The collection is available at http://icfa.doaks.org/collections/artamonoff/items.
The photographs can be browsed in toto, via a map, via a tag cloud, or with a keyword search. I looked at the tag cloud and chose brickwork, for which I got 61 results.
The pictures are presented in a grid with location, thumbnail, and brief description. The individual item pages show larger pictures (but I wish they could be larger, I feel like I missed a lot of detail), date taken, more extensive description, and in many places a Google Map so you can get an idea of what the area looks like now. The announcement of this collection notes that a lot of these sites and monuments have fallen into disrepair or have vanished completely.
In addition to the photographs, there is also a biography of the photographer and a list of sites where the pictures were taken.
I have no idea why these images resonate with me so much. They seem almost haunted, but at the same time they occupy a landscape that is determined to be ordinary (note the imposing exterior of the St. Mary Pammakaristos, before its restoration, with what looks like a string of laundry in the foreground. I’m not much of a critic in these matters but I think it might also be that Artamonoff was a pretty damn good photographer — he was able to take both detailed and long-range pictures without losing any context.
The collection is small enough to browse; if the images themselves were larger this collection would be absolutely incredible. As it is it is well worth a visit if you’re at all interested in history or archaelogy.
Bishop Museum Putting Hawaii Archaeological Site Information Online
Thanks to Hawaii News Now for the heads up about a new offering from the Bishop Museum: the museum has launched the Hawaiian Archaeological Survey (HAS) online database. This site contains information on sites in Hawaii excavated by Bishop Museum archaeologists – over 12,800 sites at this point. It’ll be updated on an ongoing basis — plans for the second version include over 500 archaeological research manuscripts in PDF as well as thousands of artifact images.
The current version of HAS is available at http://has.bishopmuseum.org. Take a quick look at the definitions page before you get too far into it, as it explains not only how the sites are denoted but also some Hawaiian words that are used in the description of the sites. (Words, for example, like kuaiwi or pōhaku a Kāne.)
When you want to start searching you’ll be asked to provide your name and e-mail address, and solve a math problem. You’re not creating an account, but you’re considered “registered” until you close your browser. Once you’ve done that you get a search box and a map of the Hawaiian Islands. You can do a keyword search or chose an island.
I looked at Oahu.
The search results show a table with Island, County, Traditional District, District, and Ahupua’a (a land division under control of a chief.) If you click on a County, Traditional District, or District name, you’ll get a table like this again restricted to the area you chose. But if you choose an ahupua’a you’ll get a list of sites. The ahupua’a of Waikane, for example, had five sites, one marked as destroyed. Again they’re presented in a table with location information, site name (not all places have site names), Bishop Museum Site Number, and State Site Number. Click on a name or site number and you’ll get details on the site. Sometimes there’s just a notation, sometimes a larger description (“Kukuianiani Heiau; at the foot of Puu Pueo, Waikane. A two-terrace structure with large stone at base of lower terrace….”)
There’s also bibliographic information available as well as — sometimes — records from a manuscripts database.
The site had a limited amount of information but I decided to do a test with a Google search. Searching for “Kukuianiani Heiau” found less than a dozen results but included what appears to be a picture of the site from the book Pana Oʻahu and a paper titled From Fertile Lands to No-Man’s Land: The Transformation of Waikäne Valley.
I look forward to seeing images and other materials added to this database.
